Childhood Memories of Battle of Britain

At the time of the Battle of Britain I was an eight year old living with my parents, my sister, Gwendoline and my brother John. I was the eldest of the three.

I can remember standing in the street outside our house with a number of other villagers watching a dog-fight taking place over the village, hearing the guns firing as the planes were chasing each other across the sky.

On another occasion I can remember watching some of our bombers returning from a raid in Germany. My father said he thought there were German planes in among the returning bombers. There was no siren but not long after we heard bombs going off. We looked north towards London and saw that the whole northern sky was red. London was burning.

On another occasion a bomb landed two doors down from our house but failed to go off. At the time my mother had just made a plum pie for tea and had put it on the table. The blast from the bomb smashed the windows in the house and blew the pie across the road into a garden opposite.

My most vivid memory, however, was an occasion when my mother, sister, brother and I were Blackberry picking in the field next to Dunton Green church. I noticed a German plane fly over fairly low, he circled and came back. As I saw him coming back he started firing his guns at us. My Mother pushed my sister and brother into the hedge but I was frightened and started running. I could hear her calling me. The Plane passed overhead and I ran back to her in the hedge. The plane circled a few times and we had to wait until it flew off before going home.

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